Seeking Validation
by singingstarryknights
Summary: Sara, like every other girl on the planet, overanalyzes everything. Post 6x24. PreSandle. one shot?


Seeking Validation

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Sara, like every other girl on the planet, overanalyzes everything. Post 6x24.

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Pre Sandle

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There are three things in life that people like to stare at. A rippling stream, a fire in a fireplace and a zamboni going round and round. That's what Grissom had told her, that night they had worked the hockey case, years ago. Sara sighed, letting her attention be caught by the swirl of the cream mixing in with the black coffee in her mug. Streams, fires, zambonis, and coffee. Maybe it wasn't the coffee she was so taken with. No, coffee in itself wasn't overtly interesting, or even entertaining. Coffee was just, well, coffee. Sara had taken enough biological psychology courses at Harvard to know that there was more to her staring contest with the coffee in her mug than the swirl of cream dissipating slowly into the dark liquid.

She was definitely going mad.

The recent evolvement in her relationship with Grissom, while it should have made her happy, satisfied, content, only succeeded, unfortunately in stewing her around in despondency over what had transpired between them, leaving her obsessing over what he felt for her, and how they were going to work it out while on the clock. And off the clock.

She felt used, despite his affectionate words, his loving embraces. She felt as if the love, the passion, the joy in having a new lover was lost, even after a few short weeks, and the old married couple routine they had fallen into was slaying her heart each and every time her head hit the pillow. He had barely made time for her, in the short weeks that had passed since they had first slept together. He was busy, sure. Of course he was. He was pulling close to twenty for the county, almost everyday. They both were.

Sara frowned at the evenly dispersed cream, and slipped her finger through the sleek, navy blue handle of the coffee mug, before bringing it to her lips, and taking a long, slow sip. He had used her. Probably not on purpose. He probably didn't recognize his own actions. He never did. He was searching for validation, and she had let him find it with her skin, rather than with her friendship. Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she had taken advantage of him, acting on urges that were more than a decade old, when he had been his weakest, nearly loosing the closest friend he had ever had.

She pushed the paperwork in front of her away a few inches, running a hand through her curly hair. She hadn't bothered to straighten it today, to be perfectly honest, she hadn't cared, for the first time in a number of years, what the state of her appearance was, going onto shift tonight. Her clothes were clean. They didn't clash. That was good enough for her.

Did she regret sleeping with Grissom? In hindsight, it hadn't been the smartest thing she'd ever done. But regret was a strong word. She didn't regret moving to Vegas, or catching breakfast with Nick before shift. She didn't regret going to Harvard, or even letting her parent's B&B run into the ground. Actually, as a general philosophy, she barely regretted anything at all. But then again, it's who we are that changes, and maybe, she had changed into someone with regrets. Grissom had said that, too. What she was would never change; a hopeless workaholic desperately seeking validation.

She had hoped to find it in bed with Grissom. Had hoped that Sara-the-woman would help him see past Sara-the-criminalist. She wasn't so sure that had worked out as she had wanted. At all. Actually it had blown up rather messily in her face. Usually the realization of the fantasy, at least in romantic comedies and trashy harlequin paperbacks, lent itself to the discovery of some kind of higher level of inner peace, of personal satisfaction. All finally sleeping with Grissom had accomplished was making Sara perfectly sure that what had transpired between them the last few weeks was the polar opposite of what she wanted. Needed.

No, she didn't regret sleeping with Grissom. It had, on some perverse, twisted level, made her realize that her cleverly hidden validation could not be found in, or spurred by physical acts of intimacy with a man otherwise incapable of comprehending fully the extent of such a concept. Maybe she had freed herself from Grissom. Or at least the need for Grissom that she had come to recognize as an element of her personality. She couldn't change what she was, she'd always be a workaholic. But who she was, she suspected, was changing, even as her coffee cooled in the mug, patiently waiting for her to take another sip.

She frowned at a mixture of laughter outside the small office, in the hall, and looking up to see who had interrupted her thoughts, she couldn't help the smile from curving on her lip. Greg stood in the fingerprint lab across the hall, whirling his arms in a series of animated gestures, obviously relaying a comic incident at a scene earlier in the night, to Mandy, who was failing desperately at keeping a straight face as she listened to him. Sara took a sip of coffee, amused at how excited, how scandalized Greg was making the homicide he was working sound. Course, to be fair, no one had told him it was a DB at a porno shoot. She hadn't heard all of the details, but from what she could make out from Greg's explanation, the camera crew saw great potential in Nick, Greg, and Sofia, who had answered the call. She sat back, sipping her coffee leisurely, taking a moment to watch Greg's movements from her seat in the tiny office.

Hours later, pouring over crime scene photos of a fresh scene she and Greg had just returned from, she let a lingering thought slip past her, becoming words in her throat.

"Greg?"

"Mmhmm." She glanced at him, relieved to see he hadn't looked up from a close up of the blood spatter on the edge of the coffee table. She supposed it would make asking for the truth that much easier.

"Have you ever regretted sleeping with someone?" She ran a hand through her curls, pushing them out of her face, missing the bemused expression that flashed across his face.

"Like one night stands, or psycho girlfriends? Yeah, I suppose." He frowned at her, watching as she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the portable lab light, bringing the glass to hover over the photograph.

"I mean someone you've truly cared for. Or you thought you truly cared for." She caught his gaze, and knew instantly she had been stupid for even asking, as she watched his expression soften, making his features appear somewhat lamentful.

"No." He offered her a simple smile, the best he could rummage up. "It's hard though, always wondering what could have been. Succumbing to the fantasy, whatever form it comes in, either makes it or breaks it, you know?"

"I just didn't think it'd be so hard to differentiate between the fairytale and the nightmare." Sara sighed, realizing, on some level, what she had just confessed to. Greg was intelligent; he'd put the pieces together. She just didn't expect him to finish the puzzle in the space of a breath.

"He can give you what you want, Sara." Greg reached over the table and retrieved a stray photo, inspecting it. "But he'll never be capable of giving you what you need." Greg let his attention be caught fully by the image on the photo paper, and laid the eyepiece over a corner, taking a closer look at some aspect of the photo that had caught his eye. He missed the smile Sara gave him, and vaguely, she wondered when he had gotten so smart. Maybe he had always been smart.

Everything had a way of seeming so simple, so obvious, when Greg explained it. She fought back a laugh, wondering which one of them should be the level one, and which one should be the level three. She'd been wrestling with her jumbled emotions, vying for a definition of her relationship with Grissom for weeks, and Greg had managed it in a matter of seconds.

Grissom was everything she wanted, but nothing she needed.

Maybe, in time, she'd find that, too.

…

A/N: woke up with this one in the middle of the night, it wouldn't let me sleep.


End file.
